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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist